On April 26, 2026, a Facebook discussion under a Royal Examiner post raised a question I did not understand at the time.
The Royal Examiner article was a letter to the editor titled “Request for Removal of County Treasurer.” In that letter, John Jenkins asked that proceedings be initiated to remove Warren County Treasurer Janice Butler Shanks, citing delayed audits, the use of the outside contractor BerryDunn, and concerns about taxpayer funds. The article also summarized portions of Virginia’s process for removing elected officials and included the Royal Examiner’s standard disclaimer that letters represent the views of their authors.
In the Facebook discussion below that article, I commented that the Finance Office staff had been tied up assisting the Treasurer and noted that the Board of Supervisors cannot simply direct a constitutional officer in the same way it can direct county staff.
Shannon Poe then asked me:
“Why did you file a FOIA to figure out who the whistleblower was alerting eyes to the whole situation?”
That caught me off guard. I was not aware of any whistleblower. My FOIA requests and public comments had been focused on Warren County’s financial systems, delayed audits, reconciliation issues, Finance/Audit Committee oversight, meeting breakdowns, public records, and transparency. I replied that if Shannon had a specific request number, I would be happy to provide context.
That surprised me because I had been following these issues closely in public. I often sit in the audience at Warren County Finance/Audit Committee meetings, where there are usually few, if any, other members of the public present. Those meetings are where many of my questions about the audit delay, reconciliations, financial software, meeting records, and oversight process began. If there had been a public discussion about a whistleblower tied to the audit delay, fraud reports, or an active investigation, that would have been news to me.
Later in the same discussion, Shannon said that her understanding was that the audit could not be completed due to an investigation and bank affidavits related to money issues. When I asked where that information came from, she said I was “well aware” because, according to her, I had filed a FOIA request to identify the whistleblower. I explained that the request I had filed concerned communications related to the audit status report following a Finance/Audit Committee meeting, not an effort to identify any whistleblower.
At the time, I still did not know what FOIA request Shannon was referring to.
The unusual part is that I first learned about the alleged whistleblower/investigation issue from the public Facebook exchange itself. I had not been looking for a whistleblower, nor had I filed a FOIA request to identify one. Once the accusation was made publicly, however, I wanted to understand what records had led to that conclusion.
At the time of the Facebook exchange, I looked for the FOIA request Shannon appeared to be referencing but could not find anything that matched the accusation. I eventually moved on. Months later, while digging through older Warren County FOIA records and reviewing what people had been requesting, I stumbled across FOIA 26-199. The wording in that request and the timeline note mentioning my name immediately brought me back to the April 26 Facebook discussion.
The FOIA Request That Appears to Explain the Confusion
The request appears to be Warren County FOIA request 26-199.
The request text says:
“Janice Butler Shanks records of fraud reports as stated during budget presentation on 3/3/26. Also, who is the ‘she’ referred to in the presentation that witnessed the telnetting into the system.”
In the timeline, the county’s response says criminal investigative files relating to an ongoing criminal investigation or proceeding were being withheld under Virginia Code § 2.2-3706.1(C). The response then describes bank affidavits and fraud reports involving several transactions.
The same response also says:
“The statement referenced as ‘she’ was posted on the website by Lewis Moten’s FOIA Request.”
That final sentence appears to be where the confusion started.
The “She” Reference Was From My Website
The “she” reference was not from a FOIA request I opened to identify anyone.
It came from a December 2025 post on my website, “When Modern Accountability Meets 1980s Technology,” in which I described seeing the Finance Director log in to Warren County’s financial system. My observation was about the apparent age and style of the system interface, not about identifying an employee or exposing anyone. The Treasurer only read a small portion of what I had written.
At the Warren County Board of Supervisors work session on March 3, 2026, during the FY27 budget request discussion, Treasurer Janice Butler Shanks read from that post while discussing the need to modernize the county’s financial software (timestamp 00:45:50).
In the clip, the Treasurer says:
“I hope we are on the verge of implementing new software that will modernize a system that has been in place since the green screen dawn of the computer age.”
She then explains that the statement had been posted on a citizen’s website and reads part of my observation:
“I immediately saw a login screen that looked like a throwback to the days of bulletin board systems, BBS. The login screen was all black with no graphics, mostly green text. Much to my horror, I slowly realized she was telnetting into the system.”
The Treasurer clarified that the comment was in reference to Warren County’s financial software, Bright.
That context matters. Since I was the one who made the original observation, I would not have been the one to file a FOIA request asking who “she” was.
The following gives more context:
Telnet Financial System
After the IT Director left, the Finance Director and I spoke briefly, picking up where our last meeting left off. I explained that ClearGov was too broad, only displayed Year-over-Year metrics, and didn’t offer much for drilling down into details. I mentioned that we hadn’t gotten around to demonstrating the system she uses to manage the finances.
She opened a screen to log in, and I immediately saw a login screen that looked like a throwback to the days of Bulletin Board Systems (BBS). The login screen was an all-black background, no graphics, mostly green text. Much to my horror, I slowly realized she was telnetting into the system. Telnet is the Internet’s version of dial-up to talk to BBSs.
We didn’t really have to dig much into what she could do when interacting with it. Another county still uses the system, but they have two RPG programmers on staff to write custom reports. Our county does not have that luxury. She brought up a familiar saying: to get anything done with the system, they had to try to resurrect someone from the dead. From what I understand, the system might be from IBM called “Bright” – but that may be short for something, or an acronym.
There may be an RFQ soon to start replacing the system for both the Treasurer and Finance offices in the next fiscal year. The main thing is that both the treasurer’s and the finance systems need to interact. My two cents were to allow some kind of read-only interaction from the public via API calls. I also recommended some kind of automation to send reports to stakeholders when anomalies were detected, such as the one that I had found in the fuel reports. Honestly, I’d be happy if there were some way I could just pick up a CSV file of data each night somewhere. If I had more time, I would have given her more advice on how the systems should be upgraded – mainly to allow the old system to be operable, to allow a smoother transition if problems came up.
We also discussed the chart of accounts data map I had sent her. She wasn’t able to use the Excel file, but the Google Sheets link worked. She was questioning why I would need to know the specifics of what each number in the account number meant. I was trying to explain that it lets me filter the data and understand what it’s associated with, but I couldn’t explain it well.
The expanded context also shows why the FOIA request’s question about who “she” was had nothing to do with me trying to identify anyone. I already knew who I was describing because I was writing about a conversation I personally had.
The Treasurer did refer to fraud in general terms, saying her office had thwarted incidents of fraud totaling well over a million dollars. However, I have not found any mention of a whistleblower, affidavits, or a statement that the delayed audit could not be completed due to an active investigation in the archived video or the automated transcript. The surrounding discussion focused on software limitations, internal controls, accounting issues, bank reconciliations, ledger reconciliations, staffing, and the FY27 budget request.
I still do not know where the “whistleblower” framing came from. The FOIA request I found asks about fraud reports and asks who “she” was, but it does not use the word “whistleblower.” I have not found the word “whistleblower” in the archived video or automated transcript of the work session. The “she” reference came from my public website post about Warren County’s financial software, not from a request I filed to identify anyone.
I do not know what Shannon saw or how she reached that conclusion. I can only say that the records I found do not support the claim that I filed a FOIA request to identify a whistleblower.
Why I Am Posting This
I am posting this because public records are useful, but they can also create confusion when read without context.
In this case, several different things appear to have been mixed together:
- A Royal Examiner letter to the editor about the Treasurer.
- A Facebook discussion about delayed audits, fraud reports, and a possible investigation.
- A FOIA request seeking information on fraud reports and the identity of the person referred to as “she.”
- A county timeline note mentioning my name.
- A public budget work session where the Treasurer read from my website.
- My own public writing about Warren County’s financial software.
Those are connected only in a narrow way: the Treasurer read from my website during a public budget discussion, and later someone else apparently asked who “she” was.
That does not mean I filed a FOIA request to identify a whistleblower. I did not.
My Actual Focus
My focus has been consistent.
I have been looking at Warren County’s financial systems, audit delays, reconciliation issues, the Warren County Finance/Audit Committee, meeting transparency, public records, and how residents can better understand the county’s financial condition.
I understand legacy systems and data, and I have worked on developing financial ERP systems. That is one reason the financial software issue caught my attention in the first place.
The larger public issue is not who “she” was. The larger public issue is whether Warren County has the systems, documentation, oversight, and reporting structure needed to manage public money clearly and reliably.
Former Supervisor and former Finance/Audit Committee Chair Vicky Cook has publicly called for a forensic audit. I understand the concern, especially with delayed audits and reconciliation issues. But from the public meetings and records I have reviewed, I have not seen a clear public explanation for why a forensic audit, with its added cost and specialized purpose, is warranted rather than completing the existing audit work and documenting the specific problems found.
The Record Is Clearer Than the Confusion
Public records often answer questions, but they can also create new ones. In this case, an accusation that I was trying to uncover a whistleblower is what first alerted me to a FOIA request and an issue I had not previously seen. The record I found does not support that accusation. It shows that the “she” reference came from my public website post, which the Treasurer later read aloud during a public budget discussion. That is the context I want preserved.
